


A Less Than Infinite War

by qwanderer



Series: The Wars We Fight [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Ficlet, Gen, but otherwise canon compliant, things happen a little differently from Loki's perspec
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 00:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14841738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: Loki's loyalty is to Asgard, first, last, and always. Not a place, not a king or a throne, but a people.





	A Less Than Infinite War

**Author's Note:**

> Infinity War spoilers! Beware!

Loki's loyalty is to Asgard. 

Loki's loyalty is to Asgard, first, last, and always. Not a place, not a king or a throne, but a people. Every choice he makes is to preserve them. He may have made mistakes from time to time, but he has always done his best to provide the Aesir with peace and prosperity. 

Today he stands among the last of Asgard. 

Today he sees Thanos's ship, and he knows that he will not be the one to conquer Thanos. He knows that Thanos will not leave the last of Asgard alone unless Loki is dead. 

Thor cannot lie for shit. Loki must make him believe. He makes a show of it, as only Loki can. Well. Perhaps not only Loki. Loki thinks fondly of the hero of Earth who he matched wits with when Thanos had his claws in him, and says, "We have a Hulk." 

There are others who must defeat Thanos. Loki's place is here. 

Loki watches from a distance, from the shadows, as his clone dies, and feels like the boy who cried wolf. But Thor needs his focus elsewhere, if Thanos is to be defeated. Loki knows his place. Thor is among the heroes who will defeat Thanos, and Loki? Loki sneaks. He twists and turns. He squirms away. He watches over Asgard in whatever way he finds himself able to do so. 

Thanos will not leave this place until he believes all resistance has been utterly crushed. 

After his fall, Thanos found Loki weak. Thanos found Loki broken and confused and scattered. Drained of many of his powers, having needed all of his resources simply to survive his fall through the void. 

Since then, Loki has rested. And not only that. Loki has learned. Thanos could never know the full extent of Loki's powers, because Loki did not know them himself. How his magic might be combined with his abilities as a Jotun. How it related to the magics of other worlds, Svartalfheim, Sakaar, Earth. 

Loki has spent the time since escaping Thanos's clutches learning, healing, and resting. Stretching his powers, testing them, nurturing them. 

Thanos does not know his powers. 

Thanos does not know that around him, many of the Aesir who lie still as death are not dead. The ice of Jotunheim has them in its embrace. 

Loki cannot do the same for Thor, not now, no without too great a risk of drawing Thanos's attention and giving himself away. 

Loki holds his breath, watching, hoping that Thanos will leave before Thor breathes his last, hoping that Loki will have the chance to save him. 

He counts Thor's heartbeats as they slow. 

Thanos leaves. Finally. 

Loki gets Thor stable, but doesn't wake him. The ship is a mess. Thor needs to get going if he's going to be an Avenger and stop Thanos. Loki doesn't plan on joining him. Loki has enough to do here. 

He can't teleport them away, not with the remains of Asgard depending on the mesh of magic Loki has woven through the debris of the ship. 

A newly-arrived group answers Asgard's distress call, then, bringing Thor into their own little ship. Loki listens to them with all he has, Allspeak and the powers he learned from the Mind Stone when he held it and every ounce of knowledge he has about lies and deceit, and decides Thor will be safe with them. They might even join his cause. Given a push. 

Once they've left, Loki draws the ship back together. He can't make it what it was, but there are enough intact pieces to make something mostly spaceworthy. He draws back the ice of Jotunheim from the people of Asgard. He does what he can for the injured. He closes the eyes of those he cannot help. 

No one asks where Thor is. Their enemy is gone, and therefore Thor must have gone after. Thor is an Avenger. His nature was to avenge long before there ever was such a team. 

Instead, they look at Loki, and they say, "My king." 

"Thank you, my king." 

"My king, what will we do?" 

Every time Loki takes up this mantle, it feels heavier. It never pleased him that Thor had been banished. It never pleased him to reach into the mind of his adopted father, mad with grief, and soothe what could be soothed and cover over everything that could not. But this pleases him less. 

"We will go to Vanaheim," Loki says. "We will wait out this war." 

Loki has friends of his own on Vanaheim, people who will at the very least give him sanctuary, him and all who travel with him. 

There is a war out there that spans galaxies, but Loki's loyalty is to Asgard, first, last, and always. It is to this handful of tired, wretched Aesir who can hardly be called more than a relic of a species that once was. He will protect them to the best of his ability. 

When half of Loki's subjects turn to dust between one breath and the next, he realizes that the Avengers have failed. 

It's time to find whoever's left and find out what went wrong. 


End file.
